6.8.3 Simple Changes

Certain simple kinds of changes don’t need much detail in the change
log.

When you change the calling sequence of a function in a simple fashion,
and you change all the callers of the function to use the new calling
sequence, there is no need to make individual entries for all the
callers that you changed. Just write in the entry for the function
being called, “All callers changed”—like this:

When you change just comments or doc strings, it is enough to write an
entry for the file, without mentioning the functions. Just “Doc
fixes” is enough for the change log.

There’s no technical need to make change log entries for documentation
files. This is because documentation is not susceptible to bugs that
are hard to fix. Documentation does not consist of parts that must
interact in a precisely engineered fashion. To correct an error, you
need not know the history of the erroneous passage; it is enough to
compare what the documentation says with the way the program actually
works.

However, you should keep change logs for documentation files when the
project gets copyright assignments from its contributors, so as to
make the records of authorship more accurate.